


in the shape of things to come

by spookyfoot



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Archery, M/M, Olympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-24 16:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15634614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyfoot/pseuds/spookyfoot
Summary: “Keep your arm just tense enough to pull the string back far enough. Trust your training to kick in. If you’re too tense, it’ll affect your aim,” Victor says, breath hot against Yuuri’s ear. When did he get so close?Victor’s hand lays overtop of Yuuri’s where it’s clenched around the string. He draws what should be a soothing circle over Yuuri’s knuckles with his thumb, but it hits Yuuri’s pulse like lightning, and his heart’s pounding faster than it ever has during competition.He draws Yuuri’s hand back with his own, and the string moves easily under their combined strength as though it were made of silk.They let the arrow fly.It lands with a solid thump as Victor whispers in his ear, “Bullseye.”





	1. mythologies

**Author's Note:**

> a fic i wrote for the yuri on ice chasing gold zine. thanks for having me!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Yuuri sees Victor Nikiforov hit a bullseye dead on from seventy meters out, he’s twelve years old.

The first time Yuuri sees Victor Nikiforov hit a bullseye dead on from seventy meters out, he’s twelve years old.

Before today, Yuuri’s only encountered archery through myths about Yorimasu Minamoto. When the Emperor was stricken with illness and anxiety, Minamoto stormed the palace and slew the scourge with Hama Yumi—his evil destroying bow. 

At Yuuri’s first New Year celebration, his parents’ friend, Takahashi-san, gave Yuuri his own miniature Hama Yumi; a hand made good luck charm he’d whittled himself. Yuuri carries it in his pocket, always, as a reminder. 

“Victor’s up next, Yuuri!” Yuuko’s a little breathless, as she nudges Yuuri with her shoulder. He holds himself back from flinching at physical contact with someone who’s only recently settled into the category of “friend.” 

Sometimes he daydreams he has his own bow. When a thunderstorm of anxious thoughts roll in, Yuuri imagines the feel of a bow under his fingers, of pulling back the string and piercing his own demon’s heart, of his thoughts settling like a sea gone tranquil now that the storm has finally passed. Even so, Minamoto belonged to legend; the chasm between then and now too far to bridge. Until now. 

On the boxy tv in Yuuko’s house, Yuuri forgets the screen exists at all. It’s the Junior World Championships, and Victor stands, poised, strong, fluid. The elegant line of his body makes his competitors look sloppy and amateurish by comparison. Yuuri’s spent hours at the barre under Minako-sensei’s sharp gaze, straining and contorting in search of similar grace.

Victor’s long silver hair, pulled into a high ponytail, spills down his back like a waterfall. When the wind picks up, it looks like it’s fluttering with the breeze and not just in it.

As Yuuri watches Victor, he feels the weight of his Hama Yumi’s worn-smooth wood in his pocket, fingers worrying the familiar grain.

“Amazing! A new record! I don’t think anyone will ever top 700/720!”

Just like that, the fantasy changes. He and Victor take back the castle from anxiety side by side. And Victor, flushed and triumphant, would turn to him and say, soft and low, “I’m glad that I had you fighting with me.”

Though they’re thousands of kilometers apart, Yuuri is spellbound. The ache of longing in his chest is so strong that his arm quivers at his side, as though attempting to reach through through time and space for a chance to be there, at Victor’s side. 

“Isn’t he incredible?” Yuuko asks. 

Yuuko. Yuuri had forgotten she was there. He wouldn’t even be watching right now if it weren’t for her. He almost didn’t come. 

They’d only just become friends and Yuuri was half sure she’d invited him out of obligation or misplaced kindness. But Minako had gleefully released him for the afternoon and Yuuko’s smile when he’d agreed was enough. She’d bounced on the balls of her feet, eyes glittering, as she described the rush of watching Victor let an arrow fly. Of those heady moments of anticipation, holding her breath as the arrow soared from bowstring to target and trying to predict where it would strike. Her face, utterly transported, persuaded Yuuri he had to see it too.

Even at the Summer Olympics ten years later, Yuuri still can’t tear his eyes away.


	2. realities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri likes the fact that all the competition rounds are rapid fire. It helps him tune out the facts, which are: that this is the semi-finals, that the results will decide if Yuuri faces Victor Nikiforov for the gold medal, that Victor Nikiforov is only meters away, and that the very same Victor Nikiforov has followed him at every turn. He’s bumped into Yuuri in the athletes’ village. Asked him if he’s like to share lunch in the cafeteria. Walked with him through the hazy Tokyo streets. Yuuri can’t make sense of it. Even logic bows to Victor Nikiforov.

Yuuri likes the fact that all the competition rounds are rapid fire. It helps him tune out the facts, which are: that this is the semi-finals, that the results will decide if Yuuri faces Victor Nikiforov for the gold medal, that Victor Nikiforov is only meters away, and that the very same Victor Nikiforov has followed him at every turn. He’s bumped into Yuuri in the athletes’ village. Asked him if he’s like to share lunch in the cafeteria. Walked with him through the hazy Tokyo streets. Yuuri can’t make sense of it. Even logic bows to Victor Nikiforov.

He catches a glint of silver hair out of the corner of his eye every time he goes to nock an arrow, and again every time he lets another one fly. The small wooden arrow of the lucky Hama Yumi charm he’s had since he was a baby sits in his pocket, its weight disproportionate to its size.

He tests the tension on his string but it can’t be any tighter than the knot settled in between his shoulders, nestled in like it’s found a home to call its own for the next four years.

“Ganba!” Victor calls, voice cutting through the air like the crack of a gunshot just before the sprinters race.

As Yuuri queues up an arrow, he thinks about Yorimasu Minamoto, storming the emperor’s palace to slay the demon of pain and anxiety. He pulls the string back and lets go.

__________________

Two days before the semi-finals, Yuuri sits in a corner of the cafeteria, reviewing practice footage on his phone, a frown on his face. The first shot was sloppy. If Minako saw his form, she would cringe and then work him until he was panting. The image alone is enough to make him shudder. He loops the video back to watch again.

The chair across from him screeches as someone sits down.

“Hi Yuuri!”

Yuuri fumbles his phone and drops it onto his tray. There’s a glob of mashed potatoes smeared across the screen. His training didn’t prepare him for this.

“I—what?”

“Good job today, I’m looking forward to the finals!” Victor says, beaming.

“Oh. Thank you?” He doesn’t mean for it to be a question. But this is only the second time they’ve talked and he knows Victor’s just being kind. Encouraging. He’s gone out of his way to make Yuuri feel like he matters, though Yuuri has no idea what he’s done to deserve it.  Maybe he hasn’t done anything at all, and this is just something Victor does every time the games come around. Yuuri doesn’t know if it’s more comforting or disappointing to think he might just be another line in a script.  But does it even matter?

“What are you up to?”

Yuuri feels his Hama Yumi shift in his pocket and remembers dreaming about storming the castle, Victor at his side, and unleashing twin arrows to slay the demons that plague them. He takes a deep breath.

“Video review. Or…I was. But—“ he looks down at his phone and reaches out to grab a napkin from the dispenser in the center of table. But Victor’s faster and their hands meet. Yuuri feels the familiar texture of his own calluses replicated on the tips of Victor’s fingers. It’s odd. Victor always uses gloves during competitions. Yuuri always expected Victor’s hands to be soft, polished smooth, as though above the physical markers of their sport.

Victor pulls the napkin free. “For you.”

It’s just a napkin. There’s a whole stack of them just under the lid of the dispenser, not to mention on the other tables. But there are lines at the corners of Victor’s eyes, skin crinkled by his smile which is different from the one he’d flashed Yuuri just moments earlier.

___________________

An arrow whistles through the air to his left. Seung Gil Lee’s arrow lands on the border between the yellow and red rings. As there are only forty second in each round Yuuri has very little time to process what’s happened. His hands—working off of hours of muscle memory— have already reached back to pull an arrow from his quiver. Still, he feels a curious mixture of sympathy and anticipation as he sets up for his next shot.

___________________

“Good morning, Yuuri!” Victor chirps at breakfast, far too awake for eight am.

“Morning.”

“What are you doing today?”

Today is the women’s individual competition and Yuuri had planned on heading to the practice range to sneak in some extra practice before the semi-finals tomorrow.

It’s early. He hasn’t had any coffee and he only technically qualifies as awake. Which is why he makes the grave mistake of disclosing that information to Victor.

“Amazing! Me too!”

Yuuri’s not sure he believes him because Victor wheedles him into “stopping by” his room in the Russian dorm block to grab his bow.

The fanboy who lives on for eternity in Yuuri’s soul is ecstatic to see Victor’s bow and technique up close.

The competitor in him is dying a slow, painful death that’s entirely at odds with the zing of Victor’s arrows as they whip past.

The tiny, realistic voice in his head reminds him that this is the same person who has over a thousand photos of his dog in a specially delineated folder of his phone’s photo album. Most of those had never made it onto Instagram. As Victor flicked through the photos, Yuuri felt as though he were glimpsing something special, something beneath Victor’s polished press veneer that few people had ever seen.

“You have a gorgeous stance. Strong. Firm,” Victor says. From the corner of his eye, Yuuri sees him lay his bow down. Moments later, there’s a flood of warmth at his back, and two hands clasping his. “I can tell you focus on your leg strength when training. A lot of people neglect that.”

Victor certainly doesn’t. Yuuri still remembers the almost pornographic way Victor’s thighs nudged the seams of his leggings at breakfast.

_Focus!_

“But your grip is a little tense. Let the bow do the work for you. You’ll give yourself a wrist injury, and I’d hate to lose one of my most promising competitors.”

There’s a sudden rush of white noise in Yuuri’s ears, as though his brain, in lieu of processing Victor’s compliment, decided to drown it out in nonsense instead.

“Keep your arm just tense enough to pull the string back far enough. Trust your training to kick in. If you’re too tense, it’ll affect your aim,” Victor says, breath hot against Yuuri’s ear. When did he get so close?

Victor’s hand lays overtop of Yuuri’s where it’s clenched around the string. He draws what should be a soothing circle over Yuuri’s knuckles with his thumb, but it hits Yuuri’s pulse like lightning, and his heart’s pounding faster than it ever has during competition.

He draws Yuuri’s hand back with his own, and the string moves easily under their combined strength as though it were made of silk.

They let the arrow fly.

It lands with a solid thump as Victor whispers in his ear, “Bullseye.”

____________

Seung Gil’s second to last shot lands just shy of center. It’s so close that it takes a few moments longer than usual to for Yuuri to collect himself.  To feel the hand-warmed bow under his palms and take a deep breath.

____________

Yuuri had laid in bed last night, his unseeing eyes fixed on the ceiling. It had been hours since they’d practiced together at the range, but Yuuri felt the heat of Victor’s body as though it were still pressed against his.

(“I guess this is where I leave you,” Victor had said, mouth quirked upward in a shadow of a smile.

After everything that’s happened, Yuuri couldn’t handle inviting him inside. “I guess so,” Yuuri says, biting his lip.

In a flash, Victor’s hand dips into his pocket and pulls out a pot of lip balm. Yuuri just makes out the interlocking “C” logo on the lid before Victor twists it open and picks up a little balm on his index finger.

“Here,” he says, reaching out and swiping a thin layer of balm across Yuuri’s lips, “your lips are chapped.”

Yuuri’s face and lips are burning. “Does that have menthol in it?”

“…No. It doesn’t.”)

____________

One more shot. Yuuri just needs it to land in the center. It just has to be good enough. Good enough so he can fight Victor for the gold. He closes his eyes. Only twenty seconds before he has to fire.

He imagines the castle, the anxiety demon standing just before the target block, the hum of the mythical bow under his palms.

He presses his lips together and feels the slick balm Victor had applied just before Yuuri had stepped onto the pitch.

He remembers Victor’s chest pressed against his back, hands resting over Yuuri’s as they took shot after shot together.

He fires.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> \+ come talk to me on [ tumblr](http://spookyfoot.tumblr.com) and [ twitter](http://twitter.com/spooky_foot)


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